1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to a method and apparatus for a low complexity transform unit partitioning structure for High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC).
2. Description of the Related Art
A high efficiency video coding (“HEVC”) standard has been discussed by a joint collaborative team on video coding (“JCT-VC”) of the International Organization for Standardization (“ISO”), International Electrotechnical Commission (“IEC”), Moving Picture Experts Group (“MPEG”), and International Telecommunication Union's Telecommunication Standardization Sector (“ITU-T”).
For the HEVC standard, one goal is efficiency improvement over the MPEG-4 advanced video coding (“AVC”) H.264 High Profile standard. In one example, a picture is divided into un-overlapped LCUs (Largest Coding Unit) of equal size. A LCU contains a number of CUs (Coding Unit) of variable sizes. A CU is further decomposed into PUs (Prediction Unit) for motion compensated prediction or intra prediction, and TUs (Transform Unit) for transformation of prediction residual. How a CU is decomposed into TUs (TU partitioning structure) can be signaled with a residual quad-tree (RQT). The RQT-based TU partitioning structure is independent of PU partitioning structure. The determination of RQT is a complex process because in requires rate-distortion optimization to obtain high coding efficiency,
Therefore, there is a need for a method and/or apparatus for a low-complexity transform unit partitioning structure for the HEVC.